Seventeen Inches
by volturialice
Summary: Sometimes, we don't notice our own patterns until they're pointed out to us. Jasper's very small mate calls him out in a big way.


When Jasper was a sixteen-year-old human, he stood opposite the army recruiter and told him he was twenty. The man squinted at his face. "Not much of a beard on you, son," he said, scratching at his own patchy muttonchops. "But I reckon you're taller than half the officers. Mind you don't scrape your head on the ceiling, now." And Jasper was waved on to the examining surgeon without ceremony, because he was tall.

When Jasper was a twenty-year-old vampire, he stood opposite a stocky, bull-necked newborn from Laredo in a life-or-death battle. The woman had forearms like saplings and radiated so much aggression it was palpable. She lunged, lightning-fast and lethal, and her head flew from her shoulders before she could land a single blow. Jasper had snapped her neck without much difficulty, because he was tall.

When Jasper is an eighty-six-year-old vampire, he stands opposite Alice in the lobby of a hotel in Atlantic City and decides to kiss her. She's wearing red high heels and a pearl gray dress she likes and her customary knowing smile, the one she reserves for whenever he's about to do something stupid, or clever, or endearing. She tilts her face up and Jasper bends down to brush her lips with his—and bends down some more—and _still_ _more, _and at last kisses her with burgeoning frustration because he is _too damn tall._

Alice must know what he's about to say, because she laughs.

"What?" he demands through a laugh of his own as she tucks her hand through the crook of his arm.

"You are _not_ too tall," Alice insists. "You're just right."

"If I'm not too tall, then you must be too small," counters Jasper as they step out into the gray afternoon.

"Hmm. Now I know you don't mean _that_," says Alice, waving a dismissive hand as she tugs him toward the streetcar stop.

"Do you indeed. How?"

The knowing smile turns slightly wicked. "You _like_ that I'm small. You have a"—her forehead furrows, vocabulary not quite measuring up to her ideas—"a _thing_."

Her meaning is about as clear as the murky sky above them. "A thing?"

Alice detaches from his arm and pulls a delicate silver bangle, the kind with no clasp, from her pocket. "You know," she insists, sliding it ostentatiously over her fingers. But even Alice's dainty knuckles are too big to slip through, and she stops, careful not to damage the metal. It's oddly engrossing to watch as she works the tight, fragile thing over her hand: slowly, gently, pushing her way in a few millimeters at a time until—_snick!_—hand, wrist, and forearm are through in a harsh instant, the gesture reminding him of nothing so much as—

"A thing," repeats Alice, gazing up at him with satisfaction.

_Jesus Christ._ How long has she been carrying that bracelet around, just waiting for the moment she'd need to illustrate her point?

Jasper can hardly make his mouth form words. "_That's_—I don't—"

He looks around wildly, paranoid that some passerby might have witnessed her little display, but the only feelings of unwelcome arousal he picks up on are coming from within. _Stop_. A deep breath of bracing sea air is enough to restore some composure. He forces himself to meet Alice's eyes like normal. It's only a _bracelet,_ for Heaven's sake.

He grits his teeth. "I do not, as you so eloquently put it, have a _thing_."

She doesn't answer, as the streetcar has just arrived. Jasper helps her on, taking the hand without the bangle. He's forced to hold his breath in the proximity of so many humans, and Alice settles against his side in comfortable silence, not petty enough to keep slinging accusations when he can't respond. But he knows better than to consider the conversation over. She'll pick up the thread when it suits her next.

They don't make it far before a few anemic sunbeams start to pierce the clouds. The streetcar stops by the boardwalk, across from a café with wide, blue-and-white striped umbrellas over little white tables. It will do for a temporary refuge from the sun.

Alice waits until he's lifted her down from the streetcar to ask,

"How big is Maria?"

Jasper holds back a groan. How has she managed to make the subject of Maria even _more_ distasteful? He's grateful for the interruption of the humans at the café, who seat them at the table with the most shade and the best view.

"How big?" demands Alice again, as soon as the waiter who has delivered their coffee is out of earshot.

Jasper crosses his arms. "I'm not answering that."

Alice's eyes narrow. "So she's small, then."

He shakes his head, half disbelieving at the direction the conversation has taken. A stab of irritation pierces Alice as something else occurs to her.

"As small as me?" she demands.

He sighs. "No."

Definitely not. He has yet to meet a vampire as small as Alice.

"Good," she says, radiating smugness.

"Why should it matter?"

She clambers to her knees in the chair, leaning precariously forward to rest her chin in her hands and her elbows on the table.

"Because if you have this thing—"

"Which I _don't_—"

"—then I have to be better than her," Alice insists.

"Ridiculous," says Jasper flatly. As if she isn't already better than Maria in every way that matters. The thought of any sort of _competition_ between them is…bizarre, to say the least. The suggestion that they are in fact _similar_ in some ways—however arbitrary—verges on disturbing. And the idea that he might _rank them_ by relative smallness? Ludicrous.

Alice gazes up at him as though, with the revelation of Maria's size, some decisive verdict has been reached. She's massively irritating, but it's difficult to stay irritated when he's looking at her face. He resolves to never, ever tell her that her lips are at their prettiest when she's smug.

He turns to look out across the empty beach, the ocean a deep gray-green now that the sun has slipped back behind the clouds. "Size has nothing to do with why I love you," he grumbles.

Alice nods. "But it does have something to do with _how_ you love me," she points out.

"Does it?" He would love her just as much if she were taller.

Her mood turns thoughtful. She climbs back down to sit properly in the chair, scooting closer so she can take his hand and face it, palm out, toward her. She brings her own hand up, concentration unwavering as she stretches out her fingers as far as they'll go, still nowhere near the span of his. She stops, palm hovering a hair's breadth away.

"I like when you open doors and carry things for me," she says, "and help me onto streetcars even though I don't _need_ help." She bites her lip, still intent on their not-quite-joined hands.

"I like that you have an excuse to touch me all the time, that you can lift me down and no humans question it. I like how your hands reach all the way around my waist. I like that when strangers look at us, they wonder how on earth we fit together—and I like that they'll never know." Her eyes flicker up to his. "I like that you have to _work_ to fit inside me. I like feeling so full of you I can hardly breathe. I like that I have to use both hands to—"

"Stop, _stop_."

Jasper claps a hand over her mouth. If she keeps talking, he's going to crush the table to splinters between them. His hand on her face looks enormous, a reminder of exactly what she's talking about. He jerks away, fingers clenching and unclenching.

"I'll stop if you admit it," says Alice sweetly, all innocence again. She recaptures his hand and kisses his knuckles, making him shudder.

"Yes. _God._ Yes. You win. I have a thing. I have a thing so badly that I am seconds away from indulging it _right here in the middle of all these humans_," he warns.

Alice's tongue darts out to wet her lower lip. "No need for that." She shifts in her chair.

The frustration in his chest—and elsewhere—is reaching critical mass. "Alice, so help me—"

The sly glance through her lashes nearly does him in. "There's an abandoned cinema around the corner."

She gets up, tosses a few bills onto the table.

Her delicate hand is engulfed in his large one as she pulls him to his feet.


End file.
